Examine the vocabulary for the mind and emotions and the way in
which they function.
Harry Russell
The Anglo-Saxons had a complex relationship with the mind and emotions; this much
is clear from the way they are treated in heroic poetry. As such, it can be seen that in poems
like The Wanderer, The Seafarer, and Beowulf, emotions and the cognitive responses to them
play a key part in the poets’ construction and exposition of their characters. The vocabulary
for the mind for the most part revolves around the four key words: mod, hyge, sefa, and ferhð,
which can be found in all three of the poems examined here. In addition, the use of kennings
and compound words means that poets are able to construct many different meanings for the
mind and emotions in different contexts which we must consider. Furthermore, in order to
assess the vocabulary for the mind and emotions in heroic texts we must also direct our
attention toward the differences between modern Western culture and Anglo-Saxon
philosophy in the perception of the mind and emotions and their existence and function. This
essay will attempt to interpret Anglo-Saxon attitudes to the mind and emotions and how they
functioned using the evidence given in heroic poetry, which presents us with an ideal source
for exploring the early medieval psyche due to its status as popular culture.
It is sometimes easy to forget when reading Anglo-Saxon texts in translation that
around a millennium lies between us and their original audiences; even with an adequate
understanding of the mechanics of the heroic society in which they lived, more subtle aspects
of early medieval life and thought can be wrongly influenced by contemporary assumptions.
This is especially true of discourse on the mind and emotions, with modern readers being
influenced by the Cartesian tradition of mind/body dualism and the general acceptance of the
physical location of the mind in the head. Some scholars have suggested that the AngloSaxons had different beliefs about the relationship between mind and body, which could
affect our interpretation of vocabulary for the mind and emotions. For instance, Lockett
argues that the Anglo-Saxons operated under the belief in the ‘hydraulic model’ of thought in
which the mind was ‘corporeal, localized in or near the heart, and subject to spatial and
thermal changes’.1 This contrasts greatly with modern assumptions about the mind and
physical reactions to emotion and shows that it is necessary to modify our approach as
contemporary readers in order to understand as much as possible the terms used for the mind
and emotions and how Old English poets made use of them. In doing so, we are also able to
radically alter our interpretation of the vocabulary used for the mind and emotions, calling in
to question much of the metaphoricity in description of the mind and emotions in Old English
poetry which we might have taken for granted before.
Essentially, what this means is that Anglo-Saxon audiences may have had different,
more physical responses to emotions than modern readers do. The modern tradition of the
philosophy of emotion can be divided into two schools of thought: those who advocate ‘the
primacy of bodily feelings who argue that physiological reverberations are what makes an
1
Leslie Lockett, Anglo-Saxon Psychologies in the Vernacular and Latin Traditions (Toronto: Toronto UP, 2011), p. 13.
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Examine the vocabulary for the mind and emotions and the way in which they function.
emotion emotional’ versus ‘those who consider cognitive capacities and rational dispositions
to be at the heart of emotional life’.2 We can see that there may be some support for the
hydraulic model in the former, but unfortunately it is the latter which has dominated modern
discourse on emotional function. However, the vocabulary used for the mind and emotions in
heroic poetry suggests that this divide was not so strongly present in Anglo-Saxon thought, if
present at all, and that the physical response was a key aspect of emotion due to belief in the
hydraulic model. In Old Norse culture the idea of a berserker, a warrior in a battle frenzy who
was practically invincible, is common and this idea is possibly reflected in Anglo-Saxon
culture through the approach to emotion in heroic poetry. Evidence for this advantageous
quality of emotion can be seen in the final part of Beowulf, when the eponymous hero at first
wrestles with his emotions when his precious hall is destroyed. He wonders what he has done
to anger God and provoke such furious wrath, and the poet describes in lines 2331-2 how
‘breost innan weoll / þeostrum geþoncum’. There is a physicality to Beowulf’s emotion here
which the poet revisits later during the fight with the dragon in lines 2550 onwards: ‘Let ða of
breostum ða he gebolgen waes / Weder-Geata leod word ut faran / stearcheort styrmde’. Here
Beowulf’s grief and anger bursts out of his chest in the form of words and it is as if the poet
is suggesting that the strength of the emotion channelled here is a rival to the fiery breath of
the dragon. This shows the audience, in a very literal sense, the raw power which emotion
can lend a warrior in battle.
Furthermore, there are other instances in Beowulf in which the idea of the hydraulic
model of the mind can be seen. Some of this evidence comes in the form of compound words
such as ‘cearwylmas’ in line 282, which combines the ‘cear’, meaning care or sorrow, with
the noun wylm, meaning a surge, and which is also connected to the verb ‘wyllan’, meaning
‘to boil’. This short word clearly functions not only as an evocative description of emotion
but as a depiction of physical response to said emotion. Here the poet is describing
Hrothgar’s physical and mental ‘turmoil’ at Grendel’s reign of terror.3 By using a word for
emotion that has both physical and mental implications, the poet shows the audience that
Hrothgar is literally overcome, and held in thrall by his fear. Both the words ‘cear’ and
‘wylm’ occur in Beowulf again in lines 1992-3, upon Beowulf’s return home, when Hygelac
expresses his prior worries about the quest: ‘Ic ðaes modceare / sorhwylmum seað’. In this
instance, the poet intensifies Hygelac’s worry by compounding ‘cear’ with ‘mod’, which
certainly seems to consciously situate the emotion in the breast. The poet then goes on to pair
‘sorh’ with ‘wylm’ to form a similarly animated form of sorrow as with ‘cearwylm’, which is
emphasized by the verb ‘seað’. The poet therefore animates both Hrothgar’s and Hygelac’s
emotions, thereby intensifying them in the minds of the audience.
It is also worth considering that in cases of Hrothgar and Hygelac, the fear in question
is caused by the spectre of Grendel, which looms large over much of the poem. However,
Hrothgar and Hygelac’s fears weigh differently on the heroic scale, despite having the same
root cause and being similarly described. It has been argued that poetry was ‘a kind of
privileged medium in which warriors can lament openly without demeaning their masculine
dignity’,4 which suggests that while Hrothgar’s fear clearly gets the better of him, in
Hygelac’s case the poet could be signifying the appropriate emotional response of a lord
when his thane is in danger. The importance of the relationship between lord and retainer is
also one of the key themes in The Wanderer. For example, the narrator tells us in line 9, ‘Nis
nu cwicra nan / þe ic him modsefan minne durre / sweotule asecgan’ (‘There is none now
living to whom I dare clearly speak of my innermost thoughts’) which suggests that the
2
René Rosfort and Giovanni Stanghellini, ‘In the Mood for Thought: Feeling and Thinking in Philosophy’, New Literary History
43 (Summer 2012): 396.
3
Seamus Heaney, Beowulf (London: Faber and Faber, 2000), p. 11.
4
Thomas D. Hill, ‘The Unchanging Hero: a Stoic Maxim in the Wanderer and its Contexts’, Studies in Philology 101 (Summer
2004): 249.
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relationship between a lord and his retainers as portrayed in heroic poetry was deeply
emotional and involved a level of trust that extended not only to loyalty in battle but also in
thought and emotion.
This brings us to consider the relationship between thought and emotion as presented
in Old English heroic poetry. For modern readers, this relationship is generally clear, since
‘emotions have traditionally been criticized because of what was considered their opposition
to reason’, meaning that most people believe the mind has little or even no control of
emotion, positive or negative.5 In contrast to this, Godden suggests that the Anglo-Saxon
mind was associated ‘at least as much with passion as with intellect’,6 which indicates that in
heroic thought emotions were seen as something that were actively called upon by the mind.
He argues that because, in most instances, emotions are seen to be ‘taken’ using the verb
‘niman’ rather than felt, or experienced, that they ‘did not just take hold of one from the
outside or inside but involved, at some level, an act of will’.7 This can possibly be seen in line
50 of The Wanderer as the narrator laments: ‘Sorg bið geniwad / þonne maga gemynd mod
geondhweorfeð’ (‘Sorrow is renewed when the mind surveys the memory of kinsmen’) as the
poet directly links the actions of the mind to the feeling of sorrow. However, this does not
mean that the Anglo-Saxons believed the mind was in total control of its own emotional state,
as the poet also gives us a sense of the mind being at conflict with the narrator in The
Wanderer. As such, we get the ‘impression that the speaker is right, his mind wrong —
disobedient, undisciplined, unguarded’.8 This suggests that while rational and emotional
thought may have been less distinct for the Anglo-Saxons, this did not preclude conflict
between the mind and emotions.
The Wanderer and The Seafarer are poems of a similar nature, with narrators
lamenting their exile from heroic society, and both are laden with emotional language. In
only the second line of The Wanderer the poet uses the word ‘modcearig’, which literally
means ‘heart-sorry’, but which can also be translated as ‘sad in mind’.9 The word ‘mod’ has a
variety of meanings pertaining to the heart and mind being and its physical location in the
chest which can be interpreted differently, once again depending upon how we interpret
Anglo-Saxon beliefs and the validity of the hydraulic model. The suffix, ‘-cearig’, appears
again in line twenty-four in ‘wintercearig’, which supports the idea that the Anglo-Saxons felt
a connection between emotion and internal temperature. By imbuing the narrator with
‘wintersorrow’, the poet not only accesses the tradition of the hydraulic model with the
temperature reference, but also hints at the importance of community, the security and
warmth of hearth and hall, to the Anglo-Saxons. Likewise, in line 10 of The Seafarer the
narrator suffers from loneliness and the poet describes to us how ‘þaer þa ceare seofedun /
hate ymb heortan; hungor innan slat / merewearges mod’. The heat described here contrasts
with the coldness described in The Wanderer but conforms to our understanding of the
hydraulic model and the physical nature of the Anglo-Saxon mind in reaction to strong
emotion.
Another variety of emotion which was important to Anglo-Saxon society heroic
society and which can be seen in the vocabulary used in heroic poetry was happiness. Much
emphasis is placed upon ‘seledreamas’, joy or happiness in the hall. The Wanderer-poet,
using the alternative ‘wyn’ for ‘joy’ gives the phrase in line 36, ‘Wyn eal gedreas’, in a
eulogy for the once vibrant and convivial community of the narrator, but there are other ways
5
Luc Faucher and Christine Tappolet, ‘Introduction: Modularity and the Nature of Emotions’, Canadian Journal of Philosophy
36 (2006): 20.
6
M. R. Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’, in Old English Literature: critical essays, ed. R. M. Liuzza (New Haven: Yale UP,
2002), p. 284.
7
Godden, ‘Anglo-Saxons on the Mind’, p. 299.
8
T. A. Shippey, ‘The Wanderer and The Seafarer as Wisdom Poetry’, in Companion to Old English Poetry, eds. Henk Aertsen
and Rolf H. Bremner (Amsterdam: VU UP, 1994), p. 155.
9
Kevin Crossley-Holland, The Anglo-Saxon World: an anthology (Oxford: OUP, 2009), p. 50.
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Examine the vocabulary for the mind and emotions and the way in which they function.
in which the heroic ideal of happiness can be seen to go awry. The theme of prosperity and its
decline seems to have been important in Old English poetry, and poets often focused upon the
danger of destruction from the inside rather than outside threats. For instance, in Beowulf the
poet includes the tale of King Heremod, who ‘breat bolgenmod beodgeneatas’. The poet
shows us that in murdering his retainers Heremod committed the ultimate sin against heroic
society and the bond of comitatus. Here the poet uses a derivation of ‘gebolgen’, meaning
enraged, compounded with ‘mod’, which could suggest a kind of madness within King
Heremod. As a result, we are told that he ‘dreamleas gebad’ (‘lived joylessly’) due to his
murderous betrayal of those under his protection. Violence was clearly a serious problem in
heroic society which poets were preoccupied with. Beowulf’s death is seen as a tragedy since
he was a great man and a good king, but the poet afterward implies that the real tragedy will
be the deaths to come, as Wiglaf says ‘þaet ys seo faeðo on se feondscipe / waelnið wera ðaes
ðe ic wean hafo’. This extreme condemnation of the violence inherent in heroic society also
shows us how precious joy and happiness must have been to the Anglo-Saxons, even if it
were often short-lived.
However, it has also been suggested that in The Wanderer the poet is connecting the
idea of ‘heroic stoicism’ with the more Christian tradition of apatheia and ‘expressing a
suspicion of and an implicit contempt for the ideal of “happiness” that was part of the literary
culture of the Anglo-Saxons and presumably of their life as well’.10 This message is most
clearly felt in line 16, ‘ne se hreo hyge helpe gefremman’ (‘nor does a troubled mind do any
good’). Here the narrator seems to accept the unhelpfulness of his emotions, before asking,
‘Forþon ic geþencan ne maeg geond þas woruld / for hwan modsefa min ne gesweorce /
þonne ic eorla lif eal geondþence’, in line 58. This part of the poem appears to be a rhetorical
device used by the poet to move towards the more overtly Christian section of the poem. So,
it can be argued that emotions could have been seen by some Anglo-Saxons, like The
Wanderer-poet, as superfluous. This could be due to the belief in the separation between the
conscious mind to which the narrator’s ‘heortan geþohtas’ belong to and the immortal soul,
which was referred to as the ‘sawol’ or ‘gast’ which it was believed lay ultimately in the care
of God.
Evidently, Anglo-Saxon attitudes to the mind emotion go far beyond what we might
have expected from them. The vocabulary used shows a strikingly alternative belief system in
which emotions operated on both a physical and cognitive level which may have had
important social implications for the Anglo-Saxons. Understanding these differences not only
leads to different interpretations of the texts used, but also allows us to see how contemporary
assumptions can skew our understanding of different cultures. Finally, the mind and emotions
clearly play an important part in the development of heroic characters like Beowulf; in
dealing with themes such as between heroism and the mind, or emotional states, Old English
poets have given us an insight into the complex beliefs and relationships which their
audiences had with the mind and emotions.
10
Hill, ‘The Unchanging Hero’, p. 237.
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